My New Project.......

       In the beginning, I didn't know what to do my project on, and was a little stress about it. However, Josh and Matt helped me a lot in finally being able to plan my experiment. I have always been very concerned about the environmental pollution caused by man. For instance, the tons and tons of waste that is dumped in landfills, and pollutes the soil, air ,and water resources. Unfortunately, most of the waste is made up of plastic such as plastic bags, plastic bottles, etc.  Plastic is very useful in modern society, but it can also take hundred of years to degrade. In my project I will be observing the degradation of plastic in soil under different conditions.
      I started my experiment by cutting several plastic bags into stripes.  I obtained 30 small plants pots, and one stripe was buried in each pot. In addition, the pots were labeled numerically. Before I buried the plastic stripe I weighted it, and recorded this number.
Half of the pots were covered with regular soil (obtained from my backyard), and the other half with potting soil.

Tomorrow,I will  be planting a legume on 10 of the pots (5 regular soil & 5 potting soil). In addition, another type of plant seed will be planted in 10 other pots (5 regular & 5 potting soil), and the rest of the pots are going to be left alone. I am excited super excited for my project this semester, and will keep updating. Oh, I forgot to mention that this is only one part of my project!!




The 30 small plant pots



The stripes cut from plastic bags



Cutting stripes from plastic bags

Last Friday I did my presentation, and everything went well. I actually did better than I thought I would, and got full points on my presentation. To be honest, I didn't like my presentation that much, but everybody else seemed to like it. I had some problems at the beginning, because I couldn't add some pictures, because they weren't compatible with  power point. However, Josh was able to convert the picture, and everything work out. In addition, I am very excited for next semester, and hopefully I can continue being a S-STEM Scholar, but right now I just want to focus on studying for my finals!! I have picture of my bacteria in the bottom (Figure 1), but the quality is not that great. 

Figure 1 

Figure 1: Positive MSA test

Before thanksgiving break, I left my MSA plate in the incubator, and today I got to see the results. The test was positive for acid (Figure 1), and I now know that my unknown is Staphylococcus aureus.  I have already confirm it with josh. However, to my distress, I have my research paper due this week, and I haven’t started. I didn’t even know how to do the paper, but fortunately a fellow STEM-Scholar gave me some advice!! I am going to start on it today, but I am very optimistic that I will finish in time!!  I am very satisfied with my performance so far, and hope to improve next semester.

Figure 1

I have had some major drawbacks along in my project. First of all, I didn't get the right results for my gram staining the first three times I did it. Josh eventually told me himself that I had gotten cocci (which I already knew) gram positive, because I needed to move on in my project. However, I told him that later on I would perform the gram staining once again in order to get the results on my own. In addition, the next step was to perform a Catalase test, and this came out positive. Afterwards, I performed a Glucose fermentation test (Figure 1), and once again this came out to be positive. After that, I had to do a MSA test, and I am going to check the results on Monday.  I also did the gram stain a fourth time, and finally I got the right results on my own!!! I am very happy, and can't wait to see the results for my MSA test on Monday.

Figure 2

Figure 1

The first week as an intern is almost over, and I feel excited about the rest of the semester. This week I started my project in identifying my unknown bacteria, but I have had some drawback along the way. First of all, I am not very familiar with bacteria, but there is always Josh who has helped me a lot this week. In addition, there are also a lot of friendly experienced S-STEM scholars willing to help.  I have made some progress in identifying my unknown, but it is not as much as I wish I had done.  My results so far have been growing a bacterial lawn (Figure 1), and isolating a bacteria colony successfully (Figure 2).  However, I didn’t have as much bacterium growth on the lawn plate as I should have had. In addition, I have correctly concluded that my unknown was cocci, but made some mistakes on my gram staining and couldn’t find out if it was gram positive or gram negative. Tomorrow I will be performing it once again, and hopefully this time I can succeed!!!

This is just the beggining....

  

I applied to the S-STEM Program not really knowing what to expect. I knew that it was a great opportunity, but other than that I hardly knew anything about it. However, I was fortunate enough to be admitted to the program, and last week I had my orientation. I am excited about the opportunity of being part of it, but at the same time I am nervous. First of all, I don't really know what I am going to be doing for my internship. I also am having a hard time creating my blog, because I have never in my life done a blog! I know I will eventually become a expert in blogging, but for know I am a little stress out about it.  I know that right now I am the newbie, and that it would take some time to be completely part of the S-STEM Program.  I plan on working as hard as possible to achieve this. I am also very happy, because everyone in the S-STEM Program seems very nice and willing to help me succeed. In addition, I also feel kind of intimidated, because the other S-STEM Scholars seem like brilliant young scientists. However, I am also able to succeed as a S-STEM Scholar, and I have high expectations for myself !!

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